The importance of optimising video campaigns
When you create marketing videos you don’t simply want people to see them; you also want them to enjoy them and share them. Most importantly of all, you want viewers to feel compelled to complete the call to action and continue along the buyer’s journey.
If you have ever made or considered making a purchase based on a video that popped up in your newsfeed, you already know how powerful video marketing can be. Advertisers who use video marketing are already discovering the benefits while others are looking at how they too can bring video marketing into the mix.
According to Wyzowl, 88% of people say they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s video. In addition, 73% said they most like to learn about a product or service by watching a video, compared with 11% who would rather read an article*.
For many, video is easier to consume than text or sound alone. Prospects engage more strongly with video and that helps them feel a more intimate connection with your brand. Because of that, including a video in your sales emails is likely to quadruple your click-through rate and enhance your sales figures.
*https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/
The importance of video marketing test and learn techniques
To ensure that your videos deliver the best possible results, it is worthwhile to implement a test and learn process. Just as you might use A/B testing to establish which subject header yields the best open rate in email marketing, you can show variants of the same video to a small audience and gather insights. Your content may affect people in diverse ways depending on factors such as age range, social background, occupation, gender and more. When testing, therefore, it is important to ensure that your video content achieves the desired affect on your target audience.
From what you learn, you will have the knowledge to produce more powerful content and you will save money because you can avoid the cost of rolling out a weak campaign.
The test and learn process means that you don’t have to base your marketing strategies on vague KPIs such as profit. Instead, you can gain a better understanding of the impact of your efforts. On top of this, test and learn doesn’t just improve ROI, but it also increases your ability to recognise effective creative work from the outset and to pre-empt how your target audience(s) will respond.
Testing and refining your video concepts and components
The messages and visual imagery you choose can make all the difference to the success of your campaign. It is essential, therefore, that you scrutinise and tweak a range of elements for your videos to make the best possible impact.
When making these adjustments, you should resist the temptation to adjust several elements at once. Only by making tweaks to one element at a time can you establish which changes are making a difference and which ones are not.
Messaging
By testing different messages on your audience, you can determine which ones generate likes, click-throughs, leads, and sales. Choosing between everyday words or jargon, long sentences or short, a serious or humorous tone and many other factors can influence whether a message hits home.
When testing your message, it is worth obtaining your audience’s opinion on a range of elements such as:
Language
The words and phrases you use should be easy to comprehend by a wide audience. Is your message free of jargon, acronyms, and unusual words?
Clarity
Does the audience understand what you’re telling them? An expensive, high-quality video may wow your audience, but it has failed in its job if the viewer can’t work out what you’re saying.
Benefits
Don’t leave the viewer wondering what they are going to get out of buying the advertised product or service.
Honesty
Can you substantiate your claims? Does your message seem too good to be true? Exaggeration can turn people off.
Testimonials and reviews
People have more confidence in brands that obtain good customer feedback. Including testimonial and reviews in your videos can win customers.
Calls to action
Having consumed a piece of content, your audience needs to know what to do next. Do you want them to sign up for a demo or webinar? Should they subscribe? Not only should your CTA be clear and appropriate, but it should also sit comfortably within your brand guidelines.
Visual imagery
Just as different messages can impact on responses, so too can visual imagery. Certain topics and concepts are more difficult to explain in words, so using the right visual imagery can bring clarity and comprehension. Furthermore, it can strengthen your message.
When you create your videos, you should frequently be scrutinising your images by asking yourself various questions such as:
Is it helpful?
If you have included a picture, a piece of footage, or a design element for no reason other than the fact you like it, it could be worth reconsidering whether to use it. Try not to confuse your viewers by showing them things that are unlikely to lead to a conversion.
Is it on brand?
Your brand has a voice, a look, a colour palette, and other elements that make it stand out from competitors. Regardless of how innovative, flashy, or off-the-wall your video is, your brand must always be present and clear.
Are image elements in the right place?
The average viewer looks at the centre of an image first, so if you choose to move the focus elsewhere, you should have a good reason for doing so.
Is the content original?
Certain stock images and footage are becoming increasingly familiar. You’ve seen the team of bright young things in the office with the bare brick walls, or the call centre operative delightedly handling an enquiry. Original content takes time and money, but viewers are more likely to pay attention to something that appears brand new.
Are your colour choices appropriate?
Certain colours and combinations of colours are more eye-catching than others or give a more professional impression than others. More importantly, colour considerations can make the difference to whether people read your text or ignore it.
Does the font work?
Fancy fonts that are difficult to read can frustrate your audience, so it’s best to go for simplicity and avoid ambiguity. Similarly, the size of the text is an important consideration. It should be big enough for the viewer to read it easily, but not so big that it distracts from other elements.
Is the thumbnail right?
The thumbnail should entice a user to click through and watch the video. It’s no surprise, therefore, that it should look interesting. It should be of high resolution, match the video content, and be on-brand. Thumbnails with people usually get more clicks as do those that show emotion. A/B testing of thumbnails is a worthwhile and straightforward process.
Bear in mind that testing is not something that you do every so often. You should consider it an essential element in the campaign process.
Why emotional responses matter in video marketing
When you make your adjustments, you need to test your videos for emotional responses. Many of the decisions we make are based on feelings rather than rational thought processes. Therefore, showing a prospect how happy people are using your product, or how much more attractive, or how much more popular is much more effective than quoting hard facts and dry statistics.
An example of how an emotional response can make a viewer part with their cash is advertisements for charities. A charity could simply tell you that it needs a certain amount of money each year to provide its vital services. Such transparency may be refreshing but it is unlikely to generate a strong emotional response. On the other hand, images of lonely elderly people, starving children, and mistreated animals can quickly get people reaching for their credit cards.
Because of this, more organisations are discovering that biometric technology can provide valuable insight into how viewers react emotionally to marketing materials.
Biometric technology is now a common feature of daily life. When you access your smart device by scanning your fingerprint, or a facility uses facial recognition software to decide whether you can enter a restricted area, you are witnessing biometric technology at work.
When it comes to video marketing, a range of biometric technologies can provide information that we can use to work out a user’s emotional response to certain stimuli. Technologies such as eye tracking, galvanic skin response (GSR), and facial expression analysis can all provide useful insights into a viewer’s reactions.
Eye tracking
Knowing where a viewer looks when they watch a video tells you which parts of the video are interesting, and which aren’t. Does the viewer read the slogans that pop up? Do they look at the product or are they more interested in the attractive person doing the demo? Do they even spot the call to action? Eye tracking technology tells you which elements of your video are working and what needs improvement.
GSR
When a person experiences emotional arousal, whether they’re feeling excited, anxious, or ecstatic, their sweat level increases along with their heart rate. GSR technology measures these increases so when we use it to determine a user’s emotional response to a video, we can learn how intense the reaction is.
Facial expression analysis
Your facial expression says a lot about how you’re feeling at a given moment, and facial expression analysis software is powerful enough to identify contempt, surprise, disgust, joy, anger, fear, and sadness. This is another useful tool in helping determine whether your video has the desired effect on the viewer.
Each of these technologies can provide useful information, but when we combine them, we can gain a far deeper understanding of the effectiveness of our video content. For example, while GSR tells us that an emotional response occurred, eye tracking can show us what triggered the response. We can identify subconscious reactions, we can learn about the emotions that people may be feeling but don’t know how to express, and we can use that information deliver content that increases ROI.
In summary
Video is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing kit, but creating a video is just one part of the video marketing campaign. For best results, you need to make multiple variants of the video with subtle tweaks to different elements. Then you need to evaluate their emotional impact on an audience, ideally using biometric technology, and make further adjustments as necessary.
Key Takeaways
Thanks for reading our guide on how to enhance your video marketing campaigns. We hope you now feel equipped to create high-achieving videos. Here’s a summary of the key points.
- Video marketing is growing. To get your videos seen, you need to make every effort to optimise them.
- Implementing a test and learn process shows you what works, what doesn’t, and saves you money in the long run.
- Your videos include many elements that you can assess and tweak. Consider them all carefully.
- When it comes to making a decision, emotional response often trumps rational thought.
- Biometric testing uses several technologies to help you determine how viewers react emotionally to your videos so that you can make changes.
Thank you for reading this guide on enhancing your video campaigns. This is the last of three guides on video marketing. If you have not already read the previous two guides in the series, please find them by following the links below.
An introduction to video marketing
How to create a successful video marketing strategy
Video marketing at Elixirr Digital
At Elixirr Digital, we deploy a robust arsenal of services and capabilities to help businesses leap up to the next level.
Our dynamic team of video marketing and video production experts create stunning, high-quality video content, and are adept at getting it in front of the target audience.
We can help you:
- Create a tailored video marketing strategy
- Tell the story of your brand, products, and services
- Get your videos in front of the right audience at the right time
Biometrics at Elixirr Digital
At Elixirr Digital, we use industry leading biometric technology including eye tracking, GSR, and facial recognition technology to analyse your videos and make recommendations for optimisation.
A usability expert will be on-hand to ensure correct set-up and advise you on optimal testing conditions.
While you are welcome to come to our purpose-built user testing facility in Colchester, all our kit is completely mobile, so we can travel to you if that is more convenient.
Let us help you tell your story
To find out how we can help you create your vision in motion, get in touch today!
È 0845 450 2086
